Every pundit and his cousin in North America seems to know what is good for Egypt these days, and they all want to give advice to the movement that began in Tahrir Square in Cairo, and is taking shape throughout the country. The trouble is that the entire American cacophony sounds like an echo chamber that keeps echoing the same word: “democracy.” And yet, something tells me that very few if any of what you may call the “cacophoners” of North America could write a decent essay explaining what democracy means to them.
This is not an opinion I have formulated recently. It is one that has been evolving at the back of my head for decades. It all started when, as a university student, I lived on campus in a building that was full of law students with whom I mingled so closely that a few thought I was a law student and treated me as one of them. There was a great deal I wanted to know about the system of law and so I asked many questions and participated in discussions they call moot court. Some of the discussions drifted to topics that relate to the governance of the ship of state and a few other grand principles such as democracy, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and the like.
I cannot now rate the level of comprehension that those students had for the topics we discussed because my own level was not high enough at the time. But I had brought from Egypt (the country of my birth) one idea that never ceased to preoccupy me. I knew that the country adhered to the Civil Code which is also known as the Napoleonic Code. In fact, Egypt had adopted this system of law when the French were occupying it and did not relinquish it even after the British -- who adhere to the Common Law – had replaced the French as the new occupiers of the country. I always wanted to know what the difference was in everyday life between the two systems of law especially in view of the fact that Canada (my adopted country) is both French and English where the Civil Code is supposed to apply in one part of the country while the Common Law is clearly applied in the other part.
And this is where the discoveries began to astound me. Living in both parts of the country and fully conversant in the two official languages, I continued to mingle with lawyers as much as the other professions. And I always wanted to know from them the things that had preoccupied me for ever. Before long, I came out with the horrible discovery that not a single lawyer or anyone else in either part of the country could cite one example where the law was materially different in French Canada as opposed to English Canada. And then I tried to find out from these people what they thought of the big topics of the day such as democracy and the like but here too, no one seemed to have formulated an idea that would apply to us who live in this part of the world and where we believe we have all the answers. More often than not, the discussion drifted to engulf the “other” countries where my interlocutors asserted that the people over there were deprived of democracy, freedom of speech and the like. Thus, all that my North American compatriots could talk about was that we had something here which everyone else was deprived of but they could not describe in any coherent way what it was that we had. So unreal, so strange and so weird!
And when the time came for Canada to look once again in the matter of the Constitution with the view of bringing French speaking Quebec into the fold, having been left out at the start, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney was gracious enough to write to me ahead of time to ask that I participate in the upcoming debate. However, being blacklisted on order from the Jewish organizations, I was not to participate publicly under my name or any pseudonym. Instead, a committee of “Prominent Canadians” was formed and I was to supply these people with a daily stream of ideas, observations, commentaries and so on. I did my part discretely but a delegate from one of the negotiating Provinces out West got wind of the arrangement and complained publicly that he felt he was negotiating with a ghost. Yet, nothing was done to change the absurd situation because it was the wish of the Jews that I be kept blacklisted and hidden, and the obligation of the Globe and Mail to see to it that the Jewish wish was enforced tightly and effectively.
Our side did very well at the beginning of the debate and it looked for a time like we were going to score a landslide victory in the popular referendum on the Constitution. But then something happened that reversed the trend. The pundits and opinion makers nationwide who sympathized with me at the start because they were happy that I was finally given a recognizable role to play in the affairs of the nation, suddenly reversed their stance and made an issue of the absurdity of the situation that kept me hidden as I supplied the committee of Prominent Canadians with material they pretended was their own and took credit for it. Of course, the people who protested did not mention my name because the public would not have recognized it and would not have known what was being talked about. And so I was made into an avatar to represent something else.
To understand how this was done, you need to understand the psychology that was at play at the time. You need to know that there had always been in Canada something called “Western Alienation” because the people in Western Canada felt that while they were contributing to the generation of the wealth and the power in the country, only Central Canada enjoyed all the wealth and exercised all the power. And so, the pundits and the opinion makers of the West continued to sympathize with me but were now seeing me as the embodiment of the absurd situation in which they viewed themselves as Western Canadians. And so one day, one prominent media personality in Vancouver lit the fire and let it spread like wildfire all the way to Central and to Eastern Canada. And despite all of this, we only lost the referendum by a whisker.
To this day, I still feel we could have won the referendum regardless of the absurdity of the situation if only I was supplied early enough with the information that pertained to what was happening elsewhere in the country, information I had to have to respond quickly to the fast moving developments. One of those instances was the fact that even the high level captains of the ship of state were confused about the meaning of the word “distinct”. It was a word that the French Province of Quebec wanted to insert into the Constitution so as to be viewed as different from the other Provinces -- all of which are English -- thus be given jurisdiction over matters like language, culture and education that the English Provinces were not getting. Yes, the captains of the ship of state were confused about the word, and the pundits and the opinion makers -- especially those in the West -- seized on this fact to make it sound like the word distinct was meant to portray Quebec as being “distinguished” thus above all the others. They lit the fires of resentment and the polls that were saying we were going to score a landslide victory began to erode. Finally, I was told what was happening in the rest of the country and so I wrote to explain the difference between distinct and distinguished but it was too late because the momentum had gathered enough steam to carry the damage to the day of the vote and hand us a narrow defeat.
This has been the highlight of my experience with democracy in this part of the world. Much more has happened before and after that episode; instances I may or may not live long enough to tell about. But if there is one thing that I wish to tell to the Egyptian people in Tahrir Square and everywhere else in that magnificent land, it is this: Many dogs are barking at you, my friends, and they will continue to bark until they can bark no more and fall silent. Do not be bothered by them because despite the shackles you may have had around your wrists -- your hearts and your minds have remained free, the reason why you have been able to shake off the shackles and be physically and psychologically free again.
I only wish that my adopted compatriots in North America had a fraction of the authentic freedom which is powering you because if we had it here, we would not have captains of the ship of state bite each other in the back for the privilege of being first to prostitute themselves to the lowest of Jews who would be looking around in search of someone to kiss his rear end day in and day out. So unreal, so strange so weird and so frightening!
You'll come out of this okay, my friends, and we'll continue to live in the misery of our ignorant pomposity.